BuildCalc is a calculator app for construction professionals, not for:
- teen-agers wanting to share 10 second video clips with their friends
- singles looking for a new way to meet that special someone
- app privacy policy reviewers at Google who seem to have trouble (1) understanding humor and (2) translating from plain English into legal talk.
As such, I am going to have to state everything here twice – once for us regular folks and a second time for Google. So here we go.
BuildCalc does not access your personal or sensitive user and device data, such as:
- Personal identifiable information
- Financial and Payment Information
- Authentication information
- Microphone
- Camera
- Photos
- Location services (GPS, Device Location)
- Contacts
- Call data
- SMS (text) data
- Health data
- Address/Phone book
- Inventory of other apps
BuildCalc does save its app state (like rise, run, pitch, preferred unit system, etc.) but only locally (on your device) so, when it starts, it can pickup where you left off. Just like pretty much what pretty much all apps in the iOS App Store and Google Play, if BuildCalc stops working, your device’s operating system will send crash report data (what kind of crash, where was the crash in the app’s code, and what make/model device crashed) to Apple or Google, respectively. Again, I don’t do this – it’s a feature of Google Play and the Apple App Store so if Google has a problem with this then it’s their own darned fault.
All this being said, apparently (if you haven’t noticed already) the above isn’t good enough for Google. So, the following text is mean to SENTENCE BY SENTENCE address the statements made in their privacy policy requirements. If you’re a reasonable human being, you will notice it just repeats everything already stated.
- In this page, I’m being as transparent as reasonable about how I handle user data – BUILDCALC DOES NOT COLLECT OR SHARE ANY USER DATA. THIS INCLUDES INFORMATION ABOUT THE USER OR DEVICE INFORMATION. This is a whole lot less opaque than Google is when notifying developers of issues like exactly how they fail to meet privacy policy requirements and yet another example of how (almost) everything involving Android development is 4x more time consuming for 1/10th the revenue. Don’t believe me? I can show you my records.
- ANDROID ONLY: BUILDCALC INCLUDES ONLY 1 THIRD PARTY SDK – THE GOOGLE PLAY LICENSING SDK. Here’s a link to the Google Play App Licensing SDK if you’re curious. Good luck finding a Privacy Policy statement.
- ANDROID ONLY: ANDROID OS + GOOGLE PLAY COLLECT DEVICE AND PROGRAM STATE DATA (which is a form of use data) WHEN APPS CRASH, FOR THE PURPOSE OF IMPROVING APP RELIABILITY. This is an approved use case (per Google’s Private Policy Requirements) and they share that data with the app developer so we can make the apps better. Do they collect more information than that?
- BUILDCALC DOES STORE (ON THE USERS DEVICE ONLY) THE APPLICATION CURRENT STATE, SO IT CAN RESTART / RESUME WHERE IT LEFT OFF. THIS INFORMATION IS NOT COLLECTED OR SHARED WITH ANYONE BECAUSE IT NEVER LEAVES YOUR DEVICE. Again, this is an approved use case per Google’s Privacy Policy Requirements. I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know if this is could be “COLLECT” data. I don’t think it is because the only purpose is for the end user’s convenience and this state data is never aggregated in any way.
Lastly, just like any other feature of BuildCalc, let me know if you think you’ve got a use case where you think me collecting information from BuildCalc might be useful to you and I’ll consider it.